


Blueprinted

by unwindmyself



Series: curious shapes shift in the dark [38]
Category: True Blood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Exposition, F/F, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Female Friendship, Fix-It, Gen, Sexual Tension, Sisters, Team Dynamics, Vampire Family, agency and choices!, fuck the friendzone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 23:39:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1488406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwindmyself/pseuds/unwindmyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A pre-showdown meeting at Merlotte's honestly winds up more like a scene from an ensemble-cast romantic comedy film, but there's no way around that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blueprinted

**Author's Note:**

> Part one, "The Switch and the Spur."

Vamp camp is, according to the maps that Willa stole, located off Highway 34, near the reservoir; it’s farther from the governor’s mansion than might make sense, but then that’s part of the point, Willa speculated, keeping things separate – the farther the horror is from where Governor Burrell lays his head, the easier it is to put it out of mind when the time comes. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, basically, but it’s not two hours from Merlotte’s (or the Williams Lake house, but Merlotte’s is a better fort for Lafayette and Luna to hold down, having contact on the outside seems practical) so that’s where everyone meets up as quick after sunset as they can manage.

(“Why aren’t we goin’ in during the day?” Charlaine had asked last night. “Take ‘em by surprise, they wouldn’t be thinkin’ about a vampire rescue in the day.”

“For practical reason,” Nora had pointed out.

“But we could –”

“Nobody here is asking you to give up enough blood to allow us to get in and allow fuck knows how many vampires to get out of prison. That would be selfish, and more than that it would be foolish. For you and also them.” A practical concern on several levels, as a recovering addict Nora wasn’t about to consider allowing herself – to say nothing of the unknown others – to try what could amount to a new drug.)

Given the combination of characters present, it’s about as ridiculous a scene as could be imagined, and between the vampires, the fairies, the shifters, and the humans, the bar is fuller than it’s been in weeks.

 

* * *

 

“Don’t suppose you got any O neg layin’ around,” Tara drawls, sidling up to the counter.  She’s affecting boredom, her eyes are anywhere but on her cousin, but she’s talking to him and that’s something he’s thankful for.

“A couple bottles left,” Lafayette returns.  “I could pour shots so’s it’s fair.”

Tara snorts out a laugh.  “Wouldn’t wanna be unfair.”

As Lafayette gets to portioning out the TruBlood, Tara relaxes against the counter and watches everything going on before her.  Nora and Eric are briefing new-girl-Nicole and her friends on the plan, Sookie’s doing the same with her brother; Willa and Jessica are sitting on top of the pool table fixing each other’s hair, the Bellefleur girls are in the corner fussing with both the jukebox and their just-this-side-of-ridiculous glitter-punk-soldier outfits.  Sam and Luna are having private words in the back, and Pam?

Pam’s coming up right beside her, looping an arm around her waist.

“It weird?” she asks, voice low in Tara’s ear.

“What?”

“Comin’ back here,” Pam clarifies.  “Ghosts of the past and that shit.”

A shrug.  “I ain’t exactly the sentimental type,” Tara points out.

“One of my favorite things about you,” Pam says, fluttering her eyelashes.

“Order’s up,” Lafayette interjects.  “Not that it’s not somethin’ else watchin’ you two do whatever the hell this is.”  He’s still not sure exactly _what_ else; he’s not even sure this is something he wants to know about or something he’s comfortable with, but he realizes that he and Sookie more or less gave her this bed to lie in if she wanted, so he can’t put up a fuss.

“Eric Nora Jess Willa,” Tara shouts.  “Good luck shots on the house, come get ‘em or Pam and I are drinkin’ them all.”

Predictably, the other vampires are there in moments, and over the sound of Charlaine whining about why can’t _they_ have good luck shots, too, they all clamor for the six little glasses that Lafayette has oh-so-gamely divided the bottle of O- between.

“Cheers,” Eric says dryly, holding his aloft and nodding for the women to do the same.

They toast their synthetic blood and knock it back in unison like it was choreographed, Willa sputtering (shots have never been her thing) and Eric smirking and Pam and Nora wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands almost identically-on-accident.

 

* * *

 

Nicole and her friends – Isi the tall, dark-haired cameraman, Vanessa the dyed-blonde rhetorician, Antoine the glasses-wearing getaway driver – need some time to talk amongst themselves, work out some technical details it’s not worth bothering anyone else with (well, they’re support, they’re backup, but they’re also prepared to record the evidence if they need to) and out of respect to that, Eric and Nora retreat gracefully. Nora goes to tend to the papers and fake IDs part of their cover (perhaps unnecessarily elaborate, but better safe than sorry) and for a few minutes she doesn’t think about anything but that, but then she glances up and sees that her brother isn’t doing anything useful at all.

He’s not even pretending. He’s standing there leaning against the wall of one of the booths, just staring at – oh, that makes sense. At Sookie.

She’s been wondering about this since the night they tried to keep Bill from turning himself into Billith, really. She knows how to recognize Eric’s expressions, knows which of them mean he’s interested in someone in some way. But she hasn’t been sure of just how interested until now.

“Hey,” Jessica murmurs, sliding across the table from Nora. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Documents,” Nora says, though her eyes are still fixed on Eric. “Can you answer a question for me?”

Jessica sucks in an unnecessary breath. “Yeah, ‘course,” she agrees, if hesitantly.

“How long has my brother been in love with Sookie?”

“I dunno,” Jessica shrugs. “I mean, he’s had a thing for her awhile. D’you really think he’s in love?”

“Yes, not that it matters,” Nora declares, and her attention shifts back to the IDs. “It isn’t an issue, of course. He and I are hardly _exclusive_.”

“It’s that easy for you?” Jessica asks, sounding perplexed. It certainly isn’t that easy in _her_ experience.

“There’s no practical way for us to have been exclusive to each other, and given both that we’ve always wanted certain things the other of us can’t give and that we’ve been rarely in the same place over the centuries, we wouldn’t have wanted to,” Nora explains, all nonchalant. “I’ve been in love with others, so has he, and we’ve been with more others than that. I’m just curious.”

It dimly occurs to her that this is a strange conversation to be having with Jessica in the wake of last night’s events, but so be it. Clearly the girl isn’t familiar with the nuances of polyamory, and Nora does have that problem of not being able to resist the opportunity to explain things.

 

* * *

 

“So do you call Eric your dad now?” Braelyn asks Willa, who’s joined the baby fairies for the moment. “I noticed you called the governor your ‘human dad’ yesterday.”

Willa shrugs. “It’s kinda complicated,” she says. “I’ll refer to Eric as my dad, or my new dad, or my vampire dad or whatever, but I don’t call him Dad to his face. That’d be weird.”

Namely because she’s definitely entertained one or two sexual thoughts about him here and there, and even though she gets why it’s not strange for a Maker to get with their progeny and still call each other family, she does, she feels it would be in her case. Maybe because she knows that there’s not actually a chance in hell that he’s gonna get with her, which she’s okay with too, but _still_.

“Huh,” Adilyn nods. “Vampire families are complicated in general.”

“Vampires are complicated in general,” Charlaine points out. “And I kinda hate not bein’ able to read y’all sometimes. I mean, all I’m gettin’ is contradiction and whatever off Aunt Sookie, but what the fuck’s Eric thinking right now? Does he wanna…”

“I think so,” Willa says, wrinkling her nose. “He’s kinda like that with everyone, but not quite as much? I mean, he’s kinda like that with Aunt Nora, but, y’know, they’re a _thing_ or whatever.”

“Vampire families are so complicated,” Adilyn echoes.

“Girls, please join us,” Nora calls out, waving them over to the tables where the others are gathered.

“So Aunt Sookie’s puttin’ Eric in the friendzone, maybe,” Charlaine surmises as they walk over.

Just as they walk past Eric, in fact.

“Sookie is a nice person,” he says wryly. “Why wouldn’t I want to be her friend with no ulterior motives?”

“No ulterior motives?” Sookie repeats incredulously. “Eric Northman doesn’t have ulterior motives?”

He shrugs. “I don’t believe in the notion of the friendzone,” he says instead of directly answering her question. “Not all things have to lead to sex.”

He’s perfectly sincere about this, earnest even, but almost everyone starts laughing at that one.

 

* * *

 

“Oh,” Jessica says as everyone gathers around, her gaze falling to Nora’s hand (currently fiddling with the lapel of her blazer). “I have somethin’ for you.”

Nora raises an eyebrow. “Something such as…?”

Jessica reaches into her little purse, pulls out a gold necklace. “It’s not fancy, and I dunno, it might be a little juvenile, but I just thought since…” _Since you’re clearly used to playing with one_ , _you might like to have it._

Nora takes the thing, looks it over. It’s not particularly sophisticated, that’s true, it’s a heart-shaped pendant (that clearly doesn’t mean anything, it was just something that Jessica probably had laying around) with a little clock in it, but she can imagine what Jessica means by _since…_ and she does tend to agree.  “Thank you,” Nora says, unfastening and then refastening it so it hangs from her neck.

And given that it’s time to start discussing plans and strategy and other much more important things, that’s all that will be said of that.


End file.
